IBGSW Chapter 28
A Show of Force
"You..." Zhang Chuanshi hadn't expected that as soon as he spoke, Paperman Zhang would name the case outright.
While he was still startled, Zhao Fusheng said with a smile, "I never thought Paperman Zhang was so old."
Misled by the records, she had assumed that Zhang Xiongwu, who handled the major Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall case forty years ago, must have been in his prime, only thirty or forty, judging by Su Long's age at the time. Even allowing for fifty or sixty, forty years on his grandson should have been in his prime, and she hadn't expected Paperman Zhang to be this old.
"It seems you knew I was coming and knew who I was, yet you pretended to be foolish earlier. What, did you mean to use Zhang Chuanshi to give me a show of force?"
Paperman Zhang's eyebrows twitched, and he said darkly, "I don't know what you mean—"
Zhao Fusheng had been smiling and speaking unhurriedly, seeming not at all hot-tempered. But before Paperman Zhang could finish, she cut him off without ceremony.
"If you don't know, shut up and listen while I tell you!"
"You..."
She turned hostile in an instant, with something of the capricious temper of a ghost-controller. But the Zhang family's status was special. They had their unique secret method, the skill of making "ghost lanterns," which at a critical moment might save a ghost-controller's life. So even ghost-controllers with strange tempers usually showed the Zhangs some restraint and did not speak to them disrespectfully.
Hee hee, ha ha... the eerie laughter began again. A great deal of black energy poured from his sleeve, and the ghost eye that had been forced to hide in the dark peered out again, full of excitement, at the people outside.
"I advise you not to try tricks," Zhao Fusheng said, shaking her head.
"I can tell there's a ghostly aura on you, but you don't seem to have a ghost."
She hadn't been in this world long and her understanding of malignant ghosts was limited. But judging from Paperman Zhang making "ghost lanterns" and "corpse slaves," this man seemed skilled in some side-path techniques and was not a true ghost-controller. It seemed more like stealing a part of a ghost's power, but he probably didn't have a real malignant ghost.
After all, not everything Fan Bisi said could be believed, but one thing he'd said had to be sincere: people who controlled malignant ghosts had extraordinary power, but those who used a ghost's power were mostly prone to backlash from the ghost. In other words, ghost-controllers generally died young. Paperman Zhang was well known and had a family secret art to rely on, and to have lived to this age, he didn't seem to be controlling a ghost entity.
"Wan'an County has long been abandoned by the court, and you know very well how I came to be the bureau's chief commanding officer."
Zhao Fusheng slowly walked toward him. Paperman Zhang's expression was dark and his lips moved. As Zhao Fusheng drew nearer he did not retreat, but the commotion in his sleeve grew fiercer. The hee hee, ha ha laughter never stopped, and thick ghostly malice poured toward her, stirring the suppressed malignant ghost inside her awake again.
She did not restrain the ghost's emergence. As she approached Paperman Zhang, with each clacking step, the shadow behind Zhao Fusheng slowly lengthened and the color in her face drained away bit by bit.
Paperman Zhang's cheek twitched but he forced himself not to step back. She stopped in front of him. The old man slowly straightened his back and stared coldly at her. His wrinkled face was taut, and the hands hidden in his sleeves trembled twice and then shook without stopping. Zhao Fusheng, less than half a step from him, looked down at Paperman Zhang and sized him up without restraint.
Zhang Chuanshi stood to one side, so tense he scarcely dared breathe. From where he stood he could hear the uncanny laughter on Paperman Zhang and see the single eye peeking from his sleeve. And on Zhao Fusheng, malice was beginning to revive and black qi was rising. She showed no sign of restraining it.
"Lord Zhao..."
She was a newcomer. In the bureau she had suppressed the newly revived bodies of the Zhao couple and had already used a ghost's power. Zhang Chuanshi didn't know how she had finally wiped out the ghost's influence and regained control of herself, but if she again used a malignant ghost's power recklessly, the consequences would be unthinkable. Once she was controlled by the ghost, the runaway ghost would turn this place into a ghost domain and keep slaughtering until everyone was dead.
"Don't panic."
In her sea of consciousness, a warning from the Investiture of the Gods sounded.
The Malignant Ghost is about to awaken.
She needed no such reminder. Zhao Fusheng felt a ghost's revival most deeply. The eerie chill wrapped around her again, and the abnormal sensations from suppressing the Zhao couple returned. She tugged at the corners of her mouth and smiled at Zhang Chuanshi. But her face was pale and her expression cold, and the smile was so horrifying that Zhang Chuanshi shrank back behind Paperman Zhang.
"Paperman Zhang?" Zhao Fusheng called. Paperman Zhang stood still. She suddenly reached toward his sleeve. Malice came from within the sleeve but it did not drive her back. She pinched the sleeve and lifted it to look inside. The gaze within seemed startled by her move and scurried deep into the black sleeve. The hee hee, ha ha that had been going nonstop fell silent at once as its owner shrank away.
"Heh," Zhao Fusheng let out a laugh and released the sleeve.
"I have a ghost wrapped around me, and who knows how long I'll live. If we have things to say, let's say them properly instead of falling out and making everyone lose face. Don't you agree?"
Her temperament was completely different from what Paperman Zhang had imagined. The Fan brothers had plainly bought an ignorant country girl from Jiumen Village, yet now she acted without restraint or scruple. When Paperman Zhang had merely given her a small show of force at their meeting, she had seemed ready to go mad and use a ghost's power, with no regard for her own life. This madness cowed Paperman Zhang at once and his arrogance receded.
"You're right," Paperman Zhang said, his cheeks twitching several times. At last he let the back he'd straightened so hard stoop again. "Our Zhang family has always worked with the bureau, and relations have always been close. It's my fault. I was a poor host and neglected Lord Zhao."
At first, seeing the two at daggers drawn, Zhang Chuanshi had worried that one's gloomy, strange temper and the other's refusal to play by the rules would end in a mess. He hadn't expected that Zhao Fusheng would cow Paperman Zhang so thoroughly that he would be the first to bow his head. He let out a big breath of relief.
"Yes, yes, the bureau and the Zhang family have always been on good terms. We're all one family, let's talk it over properly..."
Zhang Chuanshi's forehead streamed with sweat and his lips quivered as he spoke.
Paperman Zhang forced a smile on his stiff face.
"Chuanshi, what are you waiting for? Go inside and boil water for tea. I have things to discuss with Lord Zhao."
"Yes, yes, yes." Zhang Chuanshi wiped his hand down his forehead, then flung the sweat off with force and answered in a loud voice, looking thoroughly relieved. Having said that, he dove into the house as if fleeing for his life, escaping these two reckless "madmen."
Zhao Fusheng smiled faintly, then forced down the violence that had welled in her and calmed her mood, which the ghost's influence had made irritable. After a long time the ghost's influence faded. The malignant ghost that had almost resurfaced shrank back into the shadows, unwilling, to await its next chance. Her body slowly warmed, but without merit's help the warming was startlingly slow.
Zhao Fusheng appeared calm, but inwardly she was frightened by what had just happened. Yet she had no choice. Paperman Zhang was not like the Fan brothers, who had been bound by the bureau's Soul-Life Register and were only ordinary men. Paperman Zhang was no good person, commanding ghost slaves, with an uncanny aura about him. If she didn't first cow him, there would be endless trouble to come. Having put him in his place at the outset and made him put away his pride, she could expect the conversation that followed to go more smoothly.
The Zhang residence was laid out in a complicated way. A winding corridor twisted into the inner courtyard, with side chambers built along the corridor, so that the whole residence seemed shaped like the character 回. Zhao Fusheng followed Paperman Zhang and looked at the side chambers. Every door was painted black and shut tight. But even so, as she passed through the corridor and by those doors, she smelled a faint stench of corpses.
The two wound through the long, twisting corridor and at last reached the main hall. Paperman Zhang stood in front of it, and the door seemed to sense him and swung open with a creak. The room was dim and eerie. But Zhao Fusheng sensed that the place was unusually "clean." Because the room was never aired, it did not smell good and had a musty smell of paper and age. But the stench of rot she had met all along the way vanished here, and there was no ghostly chill of a malignant ghost's presence. A faint trace of tea fragrance cut through the stuffiness and lifted her spirits.
After opening the door, Paperman Zhang turned slightly and Zhao Fusheng entered first and looked over the room. The room was large. By the look of it a long low table of ten feet or more had once stood on the floor, but now the table was covered with paper of all kinds, blocking it entirely. Extra paper had spilled onto the floor, leaving hardly room to set a foot.
Not only the tabletop but every side of the room held large and small bundles of paper stacked in piles. Besides paper there seemed nothing else stored in the room. The only special item was a small lamp pressed on the mountain of paper on the table. The lamp body was ancient bronze, slightly blackened by age, with clear oil poured in. A thin black wick twisted into a cord sat in the oil, its tip lit with a flame like a bean sprout that lit the surroundings.
The sight of the room full of paper made Zhao Fusheng glance sideways at Paperman Zhang.
"Truly worthy of the name Paperman Zhang."
As she spoke, Zhao Fusheng reached out and drew one sheet. The paper was soft and fine and, to her surprise, slightly warm to the touch. After she had nearly used a ghost's power, her body was still icy under the ghost's influence, so the warmth of the paper in her hand was especially distinct. She realized the paper was wrong and frowned.
"This is—"
"This is tanned human skin, used to make 'ghost lanterns,'" Paperman Zhang said gloomily.
He stood at the door, his short frame blocking half the light from outside. While he spoke he spread both sleeves, which opened like two spread wings, blocking half the light completely. The rest of the light fell from above his head, making his face look grim and chilling.
"You've seen a 'ghost lantern,' haven't you?" His tone was not a question but certainty.
Since the Fan brothers' scheme had failed, to save their lives they would have told her much.
"Yes."
When she first heard the words "human skin," Zhao Fusheng's body shook, and the "paper" in her hand nearly slipped. Resentful, unwilling emotions came off the paper as if it had a mouth and wanted to bite her palm. She steadied herself, frowned, and set the paper back on the table.
"I hear this thing can keep you from being 'gazed at' by a malignant ghost."
"Right," Paperman Zhang said with a nod.
By now there was no need for them to beat around the bush. He shut the door, strode into the room, and roughly kicked the ankle-deep paper on the floor to either side, clearing two spots where one could sit cross-legged.
"You came to me to ask for a ghost lantern?"
"Not only that. I did come to ask about the Liu family case from forty years ago."
When Zhao Fusheng first came to see Paperman Zhang, apart from asking about the Liu case she had also meant to probe what he was really made of. But what Zhang Chuanshi said later changed her mind. If Paperman Zhang had the skill to make "ghost lanterns," the two sides could cooperate for the moment and both profit.
With that, Zhao Fusheng reached into her robe and took out the case scroll she'd tucked away, and held it out toward Paperman Zhang.
